Blog Posts From The Data Stack Tagged With high_performance_computing

Could next-generation computing lead to precise cancer treatments? We think so.

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:26:59 GMT

Let’s arm doctors and biologists with the power of parallel processing to attack the roots of cancer

Attacking a complex genetic problem

Cancer is a genetic problem, and a very complex one at that. The genetic abnormalities that cause tumors manifest themselves differently in different individuals. To make a hard problem harder, a healthy human body creates millions of these mutations and distributes the cell signaling equilibriums. The scientific challenge lies in determining, for each individual, which mutations are relevant in treating the patient’s disease.

Today we are able to gather billions of data points on how a patient’s cells are malfunctioning. By comparing those abnormalities to a normal human genome, we have the potential to narrow down and eventually go to the root cause of the patient’s disease.

Now let’s think bigger. By collecting and analyzing enough data on individual cases, we may be able to detect patterns in how the common circuitry in everyone’s cells can be manipulated to shut down the vast majority of cancers. The science is evolving, and the prognosis is getting better.

The computing challenge

So the goal is to identify and shut down the causes of many cancers. This achievement will require analysis of massive amounts of data that is available today and also that is being collected and accumulated at a frenetic pace because of advances in genome sequencing. What is currently lacking is the right combination of this science with next-generation computing power and capabilities.

With current computing limitations, it can take weeks of nonstop data processing to analyze the genetic data from a single person to identify cancer-causing abnormalities. The other key issue is when more data comes specifically from more patients with a particular type of cancer, doing the related data mining and observing different trends requires too much compute power.

This pushes us to come up with energy-efficient computing devices to address a larger population with far more compute/storage capacity and more power. To make this vision affordable, we need to look at the total cost of computation and energy and drive further gains in energy-efficient computing.

At Intel, we can envision a future—a not-too-distant future—in which a new generation of extreme-scale computing will allow us to compare billions of genetic aberrations in a sick patient with the billions of data points in a healthy human genome in a matter of hours. This comparison will single out the differences that are most relevant to the progression of the individual’s disease—information that can then guide narrowly targeted, personalized treatments.

What is the forecast? Cancer is pervasive. One in three women and one in two men would at some point in life be affected by cancer. It is accidental DNA cell copy flaws and, added to that, carcinogen-based mutations, that lead to cancer. Clearly, this is a tough problem to solve—but we have to believe that we can indeed solve it.

Attacking cancer with high-performance computing isn’t just a futuristic goal. Today, Intel and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) have formed a strategic collaboration to make this vision a reality. We are working together to use extreme scale computing to explore solutions for the most challenging problems in delivering personalized medicine to treat cancer and other complex diseases. The ultimate goal is to create a system of algorithms, computations, and models that can select a “high probability of success” treatment for an individual patient.

Ambitious design goals

To tackle this computational genomics problem, we need to optimize servers and software to create solutions that can quickly sort through enormous amounts of data to isolate the genetic variations that contribute to disease. And we need to do this in a cost-efficient manner, using general-purpose processors and energy-efficient configurations.

Here are some of the key design goals for these new solutions that will stem from our collaboration with OHSU:

Develop algorithms and software that parallelize everything to allow dozens of processor cores to work simultaneously on different aspect of a problem.
Develop a processor capable of doing all of the data crunching on a minimal amount of energy-efficient servers to avoid the high energy costs that come with running multiple servers in a supercomputing cluster.
Use accelerators to speed up computations.
Make the communication between the processor cores and servers highly efficient.
Process data in memory to avoid the I/O latency that comes with data going back and forth between memory and disk.

The Intel contribution

Intel is uniquely positioned to deliver the computing architecture that will solve today’s computational genomics problem. We know the hardware better than anyone, and we know how to optimize systems to make them run faster and be more energy efficient.

We now have the capability to deliver, say, 72 cores (Intel™ Xeon™ Sandybridge server with one Intel Xeon Phi) in a single server. This number will grow in the future, as will the processing power of the cores, as we design architectures to address a new generation of computing challenges.

Our collaboration with OHSU may even lead to advances in Intel Architecture, as we incorporate our learnings into the design of next-generation processors.

Ultimately, we believe that Intel technology has the potential to serve as the foundation for more advanced diagnostic tests that can zero in on all relevant abnormalities in a patient’s genes in a matter of hours.

Gans Srinivasa is a Senior Principal Engineer for Intel Corporation.

Data centers: What does it take to heat things up?

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:00:25 GMT

This post originally appeared in GreenBiz on December 26, 2012

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Keeping things cool has long been a mantra for data center operators, but new research suggests it may not be essential for everyone.

Data centers have historically operated at temperatures ranging between 64° and 68° Fahrenheit (or 17° to 20° Celsius), prompting them to spend approximately 44 percent of their total power budgets on cooling.

Originally, the varied mix of equipment and associated warranties dictated these relativelycool temperatures, and service level agreements (SLAs) often included explicit language about how much deviation was acceptable.

But while it's true temperature control can affect equipment reliability and appropriatemanagement and monitoring is needed for business continuity, new research supports the idea that higher temperatures are beneficial for most data centers.

So, how do you know when to raise the temperature, and by how much? Are there any changes recommended to reduce business risks?

Should every data center cut back on cooling?

When we ask, many data center managers can’t tell us why they set the thermostat at a particular temperature. It’s just the way it has been done for years.

But when well-known companies -- including Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Korea Telecom andothers -- publicize their high temperature ambient (HTA) successes at 80°F and above, we all pay attention. And when research and on-the-ground examples support the efficacy of HTA data centers, suddenly we are all tempted to reduce our cooling costs by just pushing up the thermostat.

Before arbitrarily cutting back on cooling and letting the ambient temperature rise, however, as a data center manager, you’ll want to review your equipment warranties, SLAs and compliance requirements. For those responsible for data centers supporting legacy systems that require lower operating temperatures, or for those whose organizations are subject to extremely stringent compliance requirements, you’ll want to continue to take a very conservative approach.

HTA Best Practices

That said, today’s major vendors of data center equipment generally design and warrant systems and products for reliable operation at 40°C or 100°F. It makes economical sense to take advantage of the latest product specifications and warranties. This means considering simple as well as more involved changes:

Thermostat-only changes. Data centers potentially reduce cooling costs by 4 percent for every 1°C increase in operating temperature. (Cooling accounts for up to 44 percent of the power consumed in an un-optimized data center, which is the typical design being implemented in emerging economies.)
Retrofitting the data center. Besides raising ambient temperature, hot and cold air aisle separation drives up the savings, and replacing chillers with economizers (heat exchangers) can yield dramatic savings. In one of Intel’s data centers (with 900 production servers), retrofitting and raising the temperature to 33°C or 91.4°F has translated to a 67 percent annual power savings ($2.87 million in a 10MW data center).
Optimized data centers. Hot aisle containment, energy-efficient servers and a node-level power management solution capable of dynamic resource management (e.g., power capping servers, racks and rows; adjusting server performance and fan speeds) have been shown to dramatically drive up energy efficiency and support operation at the highest temperatures without increasing risk to the business. Real-world results show power utilization efficiencies can be increased so that IT power utilization improves from 50 percent to 81 percent of the total.

All things -- and temperatures -- in moderation

Your data center can take some steps to reap the cost benefits of HTA operation. Start with a plan to phase out, relocate or outsource any legacy system that is keeping your data center at the lower, more expensive operating temperatures. As soon as possible, bump up the temperature by one degree or two, to get on a path toward HTA.

However far along you are, an energy management solution may improve your visibility into energy use and thermal patterns within your data center. Among the foundations necessary for achieving power efficiency through HTA practices are real-time visibility and the abilities to log power and temperature data, and to analyze usage trends based on the logged data.

These same capabilities can also enable other energy management practices such as lowering carbon emissions, thus allowing you to expand a data center without exceeding power limits, and efficiently balancing services and workloads to avoid power spikes.

The cost and power savings achievable by adopting HTA as a model may well represent the new norm. The timing is perfect: Data centers currently consume 1.5 percent of all of the world’s power. Annual server energy costs exceed $27 billion. By 2014, these numbers are expected to double. Bumping up your data center’s ambient temperature directly reduces cooling costs and power consumption, and simultaneously reduces CO₂ emissions.

HTA makes business sense, and it makes sense for our planet. Get ready for the data center world to heat up!

Jeff Klaus is the director of Intel Data Center manager (DCM). Jeff leads a global team that designs, builds, sells, and supports Intel® DCM.

Stampede: Driving Force for Innovation

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:56:21 GMT

Every once in a while you get to touch on a project of incredible scope and vision. The Texas Advanced Computing Center system called Stampede is a really good example. The system was launched in January and was dedicated today in a ceremony in Austin and contains not only 12800 Intel® Xeon® E5 processors, but also the first Petascale adoption of Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessors (6880 of em which deliver over 7 additional Petaflops of peak computational performance).. This system was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is the most powerful system in the NSF’s Extreme Science Engineering and Discovery Environment (XSEDE). Its one of the top 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world and one of the most programmable and accessible.

This system is taking on some of the most interesting challenges in Science and Engineering in the world. Stampede was intended to take on problems like modeling climate change, predicting earthquakes, studying viruses DNA and molecular behavior, modeling hurricanes and simulating space.

A couple of my favorite of these from early work on Stampede:

An assistant professor at MIT(my alma mater) is conducting computational studies on Stampede to explore new ideas for how to manipulate the surface of substances to do important tasks—like clean the air—that have never done before. Her studies are trying to convert CO2 into usable industrial materials.

A team at University of Texas at Austin is using Stampede to Map Antartica and its Ice Sheets: Stampede’s advanced design helps researchers map the Antarctic terrain by running thousands of simulations of how the earth, water, ice and wind interact. Scientists can calculate what the earth must be to create the surface effects we see.

Scientists are using Stampede to develop new methods to quickly pull together massive amounts of data from MRI scans and to combine this data with biophysical models to better represent the full extent of tumor growth in a patient. Their research requires large amounts of complex computations and Stampede exactly fills the bill.

When you put it all together, there are a lot of new applications based on the research activities of thousands of scientists over decades.

How can it do that? The system has two portions. It has a traditional cluster architecture based our Xeon E5 processors, but also what the NSF calls their “Innovation Capability” with Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors at its heart. The power in Stampede is that while the Innovation portion of the machine drives up performance per watt, performance density and parallelism to new levels, it does so with a programming model that is completely compatible with the traditional portion of the system. So we get to the point where we can take advantage of the ease of programming of Intel Architecture products combined with the scaling capability of Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors. Research Scientists and Engineers have developed algorithms over many years and realized that code on Intel processors, can follow a straight forward process to transition to the higher core counts and performance density portion of the system. They get to preserve their intellectual legacy and start to stretch for new insights more quickly.

I love it when we focus on the real science and applications in our work. HPC matters most when it changes how people will live in the future. It does this when new technology is born, or new insights brought to science, or new cures found to disease or find more energy reserves.

The new Stampede system will only change the world. That’s what we do at Intel. Stampede’s future is bright. Stampede is due to be upgraded with next generation Intel® Xeon Phi™ products when they become available. We are excited to be a part of this vision.

Hats off to Jay and the team for a job brilliantly begun.

Intel Xeon Phi 5110P Now Generally Available - Time to make the right hand turn.

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:47:42 GMT

For 5 years.. Intel® has been playing the role of the in car navigations system or smart phone… we have been saying to the Technical Computing industry “Get in the right-hand lane, get ready to make a right hand turn --- parallelize your code, thread and vector your application, take advantage of the performance we have and be ready to take advantage of breakthroughs in the future.

Its time to take the turn.

Intel Sr. VP Diane Bryant announced our product line at Supercomputing 12

We are very excited today to announce that the Intel Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor 5110P is now generally available. The Intel Cluster Studio XE 2013 development software tools required to use it are ready, the platforms to support it are ready, and the product itself, shipping to a select few for 4 months or so… is now available to help bring insight to the toughest problems in the industry.

It brings along over a teraflop of peak performance on a chip, the architecture behind the #1 system in the Green500. 7 systems deployed and listed in the Top500 in mere weeks prior to SC12. Major achievements in performance, performance per watt and programmability.

(NICS Glenn Brook at SC12)

Now… I keep cars for a long time… I still have my 1985 Honda Accord … I am a little stubborn about sticking to the path I am on.. I like the confidence of knowing how I am going to get where I need to go… I know I probably would be better off with more airbags, a more powerful transmission, heck even a glove box that works…

So I sympathize with those who haven’t made the turn to parallelism…

You want to keep the car you know…

And That’s fine.. as long as you aren’t in a race..

Today’s technical computing is a sleak luxury sports car.. Parallelism enables HPC customers to not only open up the throttle, but use all of its gears…

If you are doing technical computing today, your imperative is to drive insight faster, gain ground on the solutions more accurately, find the finish line as soon as possible.

To compete, you must compute.

If you are Audi making cars, or Dreamworks making movies, or Intel making chips, or a researcher making new science… you probably wont win without taking advantage of all your data and using all the compute your systems allow. That requires exploiting parallelism…

At least get the best out of the Xeon Processor based Workstation or cluster you have… but If you have highly parallel workloads, its worth considering Intel Xeon Phi products as well. Dreamworks is finding that adding Intel Xeon Phi is speeding their movies into production faster. Customers like NICS are saying Intel Xeon Phi is delivering “unparalleled productivity”.

I get annoyed when my cell phone says “Please turn around .. if possible.. you missed a turn”

Leibniz Supercomputing Centre Scores a Powerful World First with Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 Family

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 01:48:25 GMT

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Germany’s Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) provides computing facilities for Munich’s universities and the Bavarian Academy of Science and Humanities. As part of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS), it's also a national center for high-performance computing (HPC) and a leading supercomputing center for the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), an affiliation of European organizations dedicated to operating European supercomputing infrastructure and to promote HPC usage throughout Europe. LRZ is operating a new general-purpose HPC platform with over 155,000 Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family cores. Called SuperMUC*, the HPC platform is No. 4 in the TOP500 Supercomputer rankings and the largest Intel-based computer in the world.

“We considered all major vendors for our new supercomputing platform, but the direct liquid cooling and powerful performance, as well as general HPC capacity, convinced us that the IBM platform powered by the Intel Xeon processer E5 family was the right choice for LRZ,” explained LRZ's Dr. Herbert Huber.

To learn more, download our new Leibniz Supercomputing Centre business success story. You can find more like these on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor Delivers Supercomputing Power for JSCC and South Ural State University

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 01:24:11 GMT

The new Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor delivers highly-parallel processing to power your breakthrough innovations. And two new business success stories show how companies are already using it:

JSCC Breaks Records: Russian Joint Supercomputer Center raises the bar for performance and energy efficiency with Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors.
South Ural State University Leads the Way: Russia's South Ural State University implements highly energy-efficient RSC Tornado SUSU* supercomputer powered by Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors.

You can find more real-world business success stories like these on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

High-Performance Computing with Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor is a Competitive Differentiator Ohio Supercomputer Center

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 01:50:27 GMT

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At the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), an Intel® Xeon® processor-based system is delivering 1.5 times the performance at 60 percent of the power of the previous computing platform. Recognizing high-performance computing (HPC) as a strategic resource, the Ohio Board of Regents established OSC in 1987 to provide platforms and expertise for universities and industrial collaborators across the state. Its newest flagship supercomputer, powered by the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series with Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor, delivers 88 TF of peak performance and benefits education, economic progress, and research throughout Ohio. Based on actual benchmarked performance, the system is the 70th fastest and ninth most efficient academic supercomputer in the world, and the 17th fastest and second most efficient system among academic institutions in North America.

“Using the Intel® tools and collaborating with Intel and HP, we achieved just over 90 percent of the peak performance of the cluster, which made Oakley the world’s ninth most performance-efficient academic system and the second most performance-efficient academic system in North America based on the June 2012 TOP500 listing,” explained Kevin Wohlever, director of supercomputing operations for Ohio Supercomputer Center.

To learn more, download our new Ohio Supercomputer Center business success story. Find more like this one on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

Brembo Accelerates Product Development with Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 Family

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 21:34:38 GMT

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Brembo has always used innovative technology to maintain its leading position in the field of brake systems. The arrival of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family provided an opportunity for the company to boost the effectiveness of its product design with faster and more detailed computerized calculations and simulation processes. Since upgrading its systems, Brembo has seen average performance increases of 66 percent and has made computerized modeling an essential part of its product development. This has helped eliminate bottlenecks in research and design and improve the quality of the finished product.

“With the Intel Xeon processor E5 family, the performance of our calculation and simulation processes has increased by an average of 66 percent," explained Paolo Crovetti, ICT director for Brembo. "As a result, we have been able to completely change our approach to designing new products. IT has gone from a complex problem-solving resource to a simple and indispensable design tool.”

To learn more, download our new Brembo case study. You can find more real-world business success stories like this one on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

HPC at Daresbury Science, Monsanto, and University of Oklahoma with Intel Xeon Processor E5 Family

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 01:12:24 GMT

Each new generation of processors creates opportunities, and the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family is no exception. See how three research organizations are putting it to work in these new business success stories:

Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus: World-Leading HPC: The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at Sci-Tech Daresbury unveils a world-leading high-performance computing (HPC) facility for the UK scientific community based on Intel Xeon processors E5-2670.
Monsanto: Expanding the Resources for Next-Generation Seed Discovery: Monsanto increases performance for seed research by up to 28 percent with an expanded HPC cluster based on Intel Xeon processor E5 Family.
University of Oklahoma: Driving Cutting-Edge Research: A new University of Oklahoma HPC cluster built on Intel Xeon processor E5 family boosts performance for research while reducing power consumption.

Find more business success stories like these on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 Family Delivers for ChinaCache, LSU, and MIPT

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 01:32:56 GMT

For the extreme processing power and low total cost of ownership they need, organizations worldwide are choosing the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family:

ChinaCache Faces Network and Data Demands with Customized Intelligent Cloud: ChinaCache has built a content-aware, one-stop cloud service powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5 family to help it address growing network and data challenges. Read more...
Louisiana State University Gets Faster Science, Greener System: Intel Xeon processor E5 family gives Louisiana State University 14 times more performance in a greener cluster. Read more…
MIPT Cracks Molecular Codes with High-Performance Computing: Intel Xeon processor E5 family supports ground-breaking bioinformatic and pharmaceutical research while helping slash energy requirements. Read more…

Find more business success stories like these on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

BGP Develops Cutting-Edge Tool for Exploring the Earth

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 00:00:21 GMT

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As the country's No. 1 engineering and technical services company specializing in geophysical exploration, China National Petroleum (BGP) looks for oil and gas. BGP’s powerful processing system is a key part of its business. But with a growing number of data processing and interpretation functions, the UNIX*-based system couldn’t keep up.

BGP urgently needed a new-generation processing system to handle high-performance processing tasks. Intel developed the new processing system for BGP based on the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 family. BGP has improved its computing capability in data processing and interpretation as well as its technological capabilities in oil surveying. Test results show the new system has doubled BGP’s data processing and interpretation performance.

“With the Intel® architecture-based platform replacing the existing UNIX platform, our system can demonstrate more powerful functions in data processing and interpretation,” said Lai Neng-He, the chief engineer of the BGP Processing Center.

Learn more in our new BGP business success story. Find more business success stories like these on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Aria Systems, GENCI, and Roshydromet find Power plus Versatility

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:10:21 GMT

hpOptimized for today’s data center server and tomorrow’s cloud, the versatile Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family meets IT challenges like scalability and responsiveness with less latency, more I/O performance, and greater efficiency. In three new business success stories, see how companies are putting it to work:

Aria Systems Provides the Foundation for an Expanding Cloud: Aria Systems selects the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family to deliver the performance, scalability, security, and availability needed for its cloud-based subscription billing solution.
GENCI Gets Supercomputer Power: Working with system integrator Bull, GENCI deploys the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family in the creation of a new supercomputer, CURIE.
Roshydromet Unleashes a Tornado: A Russian weather forecaster underpins forecasts with the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family.

Find more business success stories on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

The growth of Non-Volatile Memory Architectures: Is it really a revolution?

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:29:03 GMT

Last week at Intel’s Developer Forum 2012 we hosted solutions from over a dozen companies and collaborators interested in showcasing their solutions for Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) in a community forum. The rise of NVM began several years ago when the specifications for SATA became inadequate to meet the performance requirements of Solid State Drives I/O specifications. The release of these specifications has begun the 1^st phase of industry innovation in developing the first new storage architecture of the 21^st century.

Many people have speculated that this transition to SSD is costly, overblown and may not be required. However, with data requirements in the data center growing at CAGR of ~85% (according to IDC) over the balance of this decade does require technology manufacturers and system administrators to “rethink” their current storage technology decisions. It requires all of us throughout the industry to re-examine our investments and architect new solutions for data management and future I/O architectures. At Intel, it has led us to form a new division, led by Storage industry veteran Steve Dalton, to build products for a future where information and data can be accessed in real time. This new team is leading the development of NVM storage solutions for the first time within our company and collaborating with Intel’s SSD manufacturing team, led by Rob Crooke, to deliver NVM with unique optimizations for new usages in Big Data, Database, HPC and Search. However, these usage models are only the most obvious usages for NVM. Real-time data access will require system administrators and data center architects to build Real-time and near Real-time data pools for users to have performance access to the most used data sets. The difficult parts about these solutions are cost/benefit analysis required to justify the purchases. Traditional price per GB analysis is not sufficient when examining the value of “hot data” vs. “volume data”.

NVM provides an opportunity for software, compute, networking and storage companies to build multimode support of different storage usage models into the NVM solutions that we develop. For the first time since I can remember we have the ability to use storage for block file system, 1^st level memory and optimized Cache transparent to the operating systems and application environments. While many of these technologies are in their “early stages/Alpha” of adoption the early results have been promising. In future blog post’s I intend to publish many of these performance numbers of the benefits with some of the industry’s most widely deployed application and database environments.

IBM’s intended purchase Texas Memory Systems is a good example of the industry aggressive trend towards SSD and NVM. At Intel, we have also made a decision to acquire new technology teams. I am pleased to announce that we have completed the acquisition of Nevex to improve server caching performance and deliver a new level of optimization for application performance. In July we acquired Whamcloud to increase our capabilities in HPC file system optimizations. These 2 new additions to Intel combined with the great team we have in place makes for an exciting time in the Data Center Group. We continue to actively invest in standards work led by Jim Pappas with SNIA, hardware and software innovations and building solutions for broad industry adoption. NVM has become the “catalyst” technology for these innovations. In terms of our longer term goals this is only the beginning. NVM is proving to be an opportunity for the industry to transform our architectures, our solutions and the way all of us interface with the current applications. We look forward to working with the industry to continue to transform the future of memory and storage technologies.

To quote Charles Dickens from a Tale of Two Cities, “Tell Wind and Fire where to stop but don’t tell us (me)”.

Feel free to share your thoughts with me @jakesmithintel on Twitter.

Thor Data Center Cuts Supercomputing Costs

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:48:46 GMT

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Soaring power consumption and costs were making supercomputing an increasing economic burden for researchers and their universities in Scandinavia. To address these challenges, the national academic research infrastructure organizations of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway worked together to develop a green, low-cost data center to provide resources they could remotely share.

Located in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, the Advania Thor Data Center (AT/DC) uses powerful natural resources and cost-efficient natural air cooling. Its high-performance computing (HPC) platform consists of 288 HP ProLiant* BL280c G6 servers powered by Intel® Xeon® processors. This innovative facility provides a new model for shared, energy-efficient HPC resources, potentially changing the future delivery of computing services.

“Cost-efficient HPC delivery and power and cooling were the criteria for the AT/DC,” explained Kolbeinn Einarsson, business development manager for Advania Nordic. “Intel Xeon processors provide the dense, powerful HPC required by the data center and are also designed for energy efficiency.”

Learn more in our new Thor Data Center business success story. Find more business success stories like these on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Kyoto University and SoftNet Get the Power to Handle Big Data with Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 Family

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:48:46 GMT

Big data is one of today’s biggest enterprise challenges. In these two new business success stories, you’ll learn how companies are handling it with the power of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family:

Kyoto University: Delivering High-Speed Supercomputer Services: Kyoto University builds a 1,202-socket cluster supercomputer to deliver advanced information services to research institutes throughout Japan using the Intel Xeon processor E5 family.
SoftNet: Fortune 1000 Customer Deepens, Speeds Analysis of Big Data with Turnkey Solution: The Intel Xeon processor E5 family-based hardware platform supports Apache Hadoop* software.

Find more business success stories like these on Intel.com and iTunes. And to keep up to date on the latest business success stories, be sure to follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.